Having nearly run out of pixels on Tom’s campaign finance post the other day, let us rejoin the issue with a fresh example. As the Times reports today, recently released data on which doctors received the most from Medicare (released thanks to a WSJ suit, fiercely resisted for years by the AMA and others) revealed that top honors go to a Miami ophthalmologist who managed to bill Medicare for $21 million in 2012.† Dr. Salomon E. Melgen “billed a bulk of his reimbursements for Lucentis, a medication used to treat macular degeneration made by a company that pays generous rebates to its doctors.

Melgen, it turns out, is a generous donor:

“Dr. Melgenís firm donated more than $700,000 to Majority PAC, a super PAC run by former aides to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. The super PAC then spent $600,000 to help re-elect Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who is a close friend of Dr. Melgenís. Last year, Mr. Menendez himself became a target of investigation after the senator intervened on behalf of Dr. Melgen with federal officials and took flights on his private jet.”

You can argue that the Koch brothers’ libertarian philosophy is sincerely held beliefs that they should be able to express via checkbook.† Putting aside the Kochs’ financial interest in fossil fuels (which isn’t easy), you can argue that their climate skepticism is as legitimate as Tom Steyer’s climate alarmism, and its expression in the political realm is a matter of ideological commitment, not crooked self-interest, that wealthy donors support people who already agree with them, not that they use their money to change politicians’ minds.

This is the first I’ve heard of Dr. Melgen, but I suspect the high-minded defense of his political “speech” is a little harder to make in this case.† Care to try?